As the sun set over the mountain of Tibidabo, casting shadows over Barcelona, the Mediterranean and the Parc Forum staging the 16th Primavera Sound festival at the start of June, word went round of an unscheduled concert.

“Do you like Arcade Fire?” messaged Ceci, an Argentine journalist. “They’re playing on a small stage now near the big solar panel. In the direction of the towers.” There, against the backdrop of the disused 200 metre tall chimneys of the Badalona power plant, the Canadian indie rockers launched into Ready to Start from their 2010 “The Suburbs” on a small open air stage. They’d long been booked to headline Primavera on the Saturday night as a highlight of the main festival, but chose a Thursday turn too. It worked. Primavera works. The city location by the Med means it's plugged into Barcelona’s public transport system and can accommodate vast numbers over the three paid for nights. Over 165,000 people clicked through the security checks this year on the warm June evenings, a mix of locals and foreigners with a sizeable British contingent.

They came to see the headline acts on facing stages including Van Morrison, Metronomy, Grace Jones, Arcade Fire, Miguel, Solange, Bon Iver, St Etienne and The XX. And many, many more, from Aphex Twin who did a 90 minute set starting at 0130 (the last acts finish at 0530 as the sun is rising), to the Brazilian Seu Jorge playing The Life Aquatic, a tribute to David Bowie where he sings many of Bowie's most famous hits in Portuguese. Six thousand fans watched that on one of the medium sized stages which hosted bands like Afghan Whigs, The Black Angels, Sleaford Mods, Angel Olsen’s expansive folk and Teenage Fanclub.

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There are not only groups. British audio company Bowers & Wilkins set up a five tonne £1 million sound system which was transported on four flat bed trucks from Worthing. Working on the theory that the quality of the sound is important – yet otherwise poor at music festivals – engineers set up four amp racks around a dance floor to help provide a roster of djs with up to 135,000 watts. A typical home sound system is 40-100 watts.

The B&W stage overlooked a beach which is part of the festival site, while families are also well catered for with a mini musica area for kids where headphones are dished out and concerts played with childcare provided. The site is vast and festival goers walk over an elevated bridge over a marina where luxury yachts are moored in Port Forum by Barcelona’s new Café del Mar club.

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The Oporto version of Primavera Sound attracted many of the same artists and 90,000 fans a week later. Like the Barcelona festival, it also utilises spaces in the city centre for numerous free concerts and hundreds of seminars and workshops for music industry professionals. The vast majority go for the full four-day pass which can be bought for as little as €145 if you buy in the month after the festival for the following year and €195 from February.

Festival puritans may miss the camping, rain and mud, while the €6 beers dispensed from mobile sellers are six times the price of the Pakistani street vendors with cans outside the venue, but Primavera has the confidence to consider itself a major festival on the European circuit - and rightly so.